Beach sounds for the Wellcome Collection
You can’t touch me, you can’t smell me, you can’t taste me, you can’t see me, but you can hear me, and I fill Euston Road with the sound of waves breaking onto pebbles, what am I?
I am a Bill Fontana sound installation commissioned by the Wellcome Collection.
Fontana’s piece will see the sound polluted thoroughfare outside the Wellcome Collection drowned out by the dulcet tones of Dorset’s Chesil Beach.
A live feed will twin Euston Road with Chesil Beach through White Sound – a sonic landscape designed to challenge our sense of place by dissolving the physical sensation of being in the city through the tidal rhythm of the sea.
Soundwaves will be projected onto the street engulfing pedestrians; knowing the road, this is likely to be commuters, students and street drinkers.
All background traffic noise will be muted by the soundscape, which seeks to raise questions about our understanding of stillness and movement, in both urban and natural environments.
Chesil Beach is formed of a unique 18 mile pebble bank, with the Fleet
Lagoon on one side and the sea on the other.
White Sound: an urban seascape by Bill Fontana runs at Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, NW1 2BE from 22 September to 16 October 2011.
I can’t wait to hear this. The calmness of the beach meeting fast paced Euston Road – that is going to be something.
Abi Vyner
Small Back Room
Hi!
Thought of you!
How are you doing?
To think I get to hear the sound of Chesil Beach every day, it’s not something I take for granted it’s a mood setter for the day. Bliss….
I hope everyone in Euston Road enjoy the sound of Chesil Beach over the next couple of weeks as much as we do at Portland, Enjoy..